Being More
by stardustfalling
Summary: Mira lies on the ground after the fact and watched the pieces of sky like burning taffeta rain down on her as she hears the boy who sent her spoons in the mail call her name. Miraxus oneshot. Slightly poetic.


**There is ****_way_**** too little Miraxus on FF. Like, an absurdly small amount.**

**I actually wrote this in September, and I just rediscovered it. I actually really like this piece, partially because I allowed my more natural style to frolic and paint pictures with words that had very little plot. I'm not super happy with the title, but I'm happy enough that I was actually able to write something I'm proud of.**

**I don't own ****_Fairy Tail_****, but I do own this story; don't steal! Review if you want to (edits are ****_much_**** appreciated), and please enjoy!**

* * *

She didn't really want to move.

Moving hurt too much, and looking at the tearing pieces of sky falling around her was much easier.

_"Mira?"_

_"Mira-nee!"_

_"Mira-san!? Where are you?"_

_"Mira-chan? Mira-chan?"_

The miniature skies were pretty, too, like crumpled pieces of taffeta. Colors like flames.

Or maybe they were flames? She couldn't tell. All pain had faded to a sort of dull ache everywhere. She was bleeding, Mira was almost positive, but she was not at all worried. There was a feeling of unhurriedness. _Hmm... is unhurriedness a word?_ Mira frowned, but the thought was too floaty for her to need to focus on it before it floated away.

_"Mira!"_

_"Mirajane Strauss!"_

_"Mira-nee..." (this was coupled with sobs, and Mira almost wondered who it was who was crying for her. Why would they cry for her?)_

The sky was beautiful. It was morning, by this point, and sunlight illuminated the clouds with pink and silver and peach and blue-like-the-little-flowers. Mira frowned. _What flowers again? Which ones?_

The dragons had left already. Poof: fading into the atmosphere like dreams. And perhaps the only reason people knew that they hadn't been dreams was because they had been too _real_, and their flames burned and burned and burned.

After a while, she wanted to move. She loved to sit on her back and watch the scraps of taffeta come to rest on her, but they were starting to become heavy, even for her body like molten, languid _something._ She smiled. _Languid is a good word._

She shifted a finger. But really, that took so much energy that Mira was almost inclined to give up. But this was Mirajane Strauss, the Demon Mirajane. She wouldn't give up.

_"Mira! Mira!"_

_"Nee-chan! Answer me! Nee...chan..."_

They shouldn't cry for her, she mused. She wasn't dead. That thought was kind of floaty, so it passed quickly. She tried to recognize the voices, but the names eluded her.

The taffeta was heavy, and all of a sudden, she realized that it was _burning_ her. And the pain and the memories started to come back because all of a sudden, the taffeta was _too heavy_ and she realized that she couldn't breathe.

The trance-like state of too much pain and exhaustion didn't wear off quickly, like in the fairy tales where they snap back to reality. She faded slowly into a more conscious state of consciousness, and suddenly she knew the people who were talking to her.

_"Mira-chan! Say something so we can find you! Mira!"_ That was Macao, and maybe Wakaba, too. For as much as they fought, they were very good friends. Mira's eyelids floated down and she smiled in typical Mira fashion.

_"Mira-nee! Where are you?" "Nee-chan! Please!"_ Those were her beloved siblings, and it made her sad that strong, strong Elfman sounded almost pleading. And Lisanna was the one who was crying. Poor Lisanna.

"Mira."

Mira's eyes opened, and now she was almost fully conscious, and it _hurt_. She carefully lifted her head a few centimeters to look down at herself and she was bleeding. There was a charred beam from the wall of a nearby pub crushing her lungs like wet paper, and her skin was bruising in flowers of green and blue.

The world went double again, and it was only then that Mira realized she had heard a voice nearby. She opened her eyes, which had slid shut after the world started spinning, and looked around with her limited mobility.

"Hah..." her voice was rough and papery, and the intended 'Hello' came out as little more than a slightly-louder-than-normal exhale that also sounded a little like a wheeze. She heard footsteps.

"Mira. Where are you."

The voice was flat and emotionless, and it was in that very emotionlessness that Mira could barely comprehend the depth of feeling.

"Henno...?" Her voice was barely a whisper, and it still didn't sound right. But still, the footsteps stopped. And then, Mira knew she was about to die. This person needed to come quickly or she was going to _die_ damnit, and now she realized just how desperately she wanted to live.

"Mira."

She tried to make a noise that was louder than her half-words and ended up coughing. That was okay, though, because the footsteps started again, and now they were stilted and half-running half-falling to the ground to save her.

And he started digging madly at the ashy pieces of city that had looked like pretty taffeta when they were burning and raining down on her. And she tried to turn her head towards him, but she realized she couldn't because she had no more energy. And then a piece of floaty not-taffeta fell on her face and she screamed.

* * *

When the morning came, finally (a morning without ashes and pretend-taffeta where she woke up in a room that looked suspiciously like the Fairy Tail infirmary), Mira wouldn't remember the blond-haired boy's answering cry as he threw the piece of not-taffeta off of her face and cradled her head in his lap and cried on her face.

She wouldn't remember him digging her the rest of the way out, or she would, but it would be hazy, because everything was hazy at that point and all that mattered was that her tissue-paper lungs were drying and breathing again.

She would only barely remember him holding her in his lap and brushing the blood away from her right eye, which she kept firmly closed for fear of what she would see (or not see), when she opened it.

She would kind of remember staring up at him and smiling, and then watching him cry as he pulled her closer, keeping her to himself for just one more minute (perhaps in their entire lives).

She remembered, slightly hazily, him picking her up and carrying her like a bird with broken wings in his arms, cradling her head like he was afraid it was fall off.

She remembered, still hazily, arriving in a safe place where it was cooler and Porlyusica was there with soft things and syrups that cooled her flaking throat.

The last thing that she could remember was that he wouldn't let her go while Porlyusica was healing her and bringing Wendy in, defying the irritable healer until she finally conceded the point.

* * *

Mira woke up in the infirmary with sore limbs and a small, tight sort of pain concentrated in her right side.

She opened her eyes slowly to get used to the sunlight streaming into the room, and she realized that her right eye was covered by something black and soft. But Porlyusica could fix eyes, she had done Erza's after all, so that would be okay.

There was a breathing person with his head on the infirmary cot beside her elbow, and she lazily lifted her lead-heavy hand to play with his sticking-up hair. He had bandages wrapped around his head, and he was breathing heavily in sleep. His coat was a little singed from the battle. He wouldn't like that.

Slowly, he stirred. He gathered the loose pieces of himself in and slowly (like molasses) raised his head to look at her.

"Mira!"

It was kind of a whisper yell, soft but still happy and sort of urgent. Mira smiled (if only because it hurt to laugh) as he tried to embrace her without harming her: this man to whom the idea of being gentle was relatively foreign.

She was truly surprised, actually, that he was showing he cared. They had both cared for each other in a strange way since that time she went missing after Lisanna's "death," but their odd relationship had been kept quietly tucked away in a place where neither of them knew what it meant.

It was simply enough for her to help him home after a night where he was too injured to get home on his own, so he drank himself into a place where it would be excusable to have someone half-support him to his lonely house by the river.

It was enough when she stayed, even when he yelled at her, and stitched and wrapped and sterilized so that no one else would have to see.

It was enough when he sent her an anonymous present from some far-off place in begrudging thanks for last time, with some strange detail that it would make it obvious it was one of _those_ gifts, as the other guild members so curiously called them. Either that or they were spoons. He sent her a lot of spoons, and they were all unique.

It was enough when she noticed that he didn't take random girls home at night anymore. He just waved in an unhurried way to them and strode out the doors to the street outside. Mira just smiled. _Laxus._

It had always been enough, from the time she went missing after Lisanna's death and he found her under the bridge playing with the funny little spoon that was too wide and too flat that Lisanna had awkwardly carved her name into when she was little.

But now, it wasn't enough and it was. It would have been enough except that the world had just ended and come back to life within a matter of hours, and she had almost _died._

So she smiled softly and stroked his fluffy hair as he tried to pretend indifference as he held her in the small, light room that was the infirmary. And she leaned the side of her face on the top of his head and hoped that it would be enough for now, and that maybe, when she was better, it could be more.

"Thank you for saving me, Laxus."


End file.
